The Cauldron

Here is an activity my students in my Perspectives in Science class did.  I think they did an amazing job, and so I’m adding this in as a blog post.  It’s too long for Facebook, but it won’t take you long to read.  Check it out.  Special thanks to Charlie Demma, Alicia Bitler, and my students.

Students play the roles of Aristotle, Plato, and Democritus observing a phenomenon in which a boiling “cauldron” is then topped with a transparent “lid”.  They prepare for and engage in philosophical dialogue and then ice is added.  The dialogue continues after that.  The setup looks a little like this but with a glass plate instead of Saran Wrap.

Directions:

• Understand your character by rereading parts of [the text] or finding other material on the web.
• How would your character explain the phenomena?  Prepare an opening statement in order to make an argument supporting a particular explanation from your character’s point of view.
• What would your opponents say?  How will you respond?

Here’s the resulting dialogue recorded live after the opening statements:

Plato—Aristotle says [in his opening statement] water is becoming a more perfect form, but it returns to another form.  Why is it not just a corruption from the senses?

Aristotle—I don’t think its returning to another form.

Plato —It is returning because it became water again.

Aristotle —Oh, okay.  Water becoming warmer or colder isn’t what makes it more perfect.  Its tendency to change makes it into a more perfect form.  Hot water isn’t better than cold water.  If water was warm and was being cooled; everything is always working toward a more perfect form.  

Democritus—Plato—you say corruption of our senses is dictated by creator.  I disagree.  Creators are created by atoms.  How can atoms cause change in other atoms?

Plato —The Creator is not causing these change.  We live in the Creator’s shadow.  The Creator doesn’t make things happen.  It’s we who degrade it.

Aristotle —Plato, if change is always decay or destruction, how would you explain our being, as we as humans have evolved into a more perfect species?

Plato —I’m sorry.  No we haven’t.  We are meant to be like the Creator who is perfect, and he tried to create us and this world in his image and his vision and our ability to sense and interact is what makes it not what he initially intended.  And his inaction is due to the fact that this a dream of the Creator’s.

Democritus —But how can the Creator create more perfect dream of us without something solid, an atom basically, that makes us humans.  You can’t come into existence from something that didn’t exist.

Plato -Where are there atoms?

Democritus —The first atoms.  Where did they come from?

 Plato —from the Creator

 Democritus —They came out of empty space.

 Plato —As time marches on and as the world decays more it indicates there was a time before where everything was perfect. 

 Democritus –As we die, our bodies releases atoms back to empty space and recreates them into something else….

 Plato —Well as we die we are returned to the earth and the elemental earth that holds onto our bodies is no longer held by the earth that makes up our bodies it combines with the earth beneath us.

 [Ice is added on top, and the scholars observe again]

 Plato —Two objects are changing.  More with the one on the top, you can see clearly its decay as it was falling apart and becoming less of the form that it should have been.

 Democritus —As the atoms of the water left the cauldron they interacted with the plate and the atoms of the plate interacted with the ice.  The random nature could be seen in the differences in time it took for pieces of ice to melt.

 Aristotle —Ice wanted to become something more beautiful at the end. Its main purpose was to become more beautiful by becoming free and flowing as water.  It’s clearly beauty because it was done in such an organized way.